EADS, majority owner of Airbus, is planning a radical costcutting at the European planemaker to offset the strong euro, replenish its earnings and restore investor confidence which has been battered by fresh delays to the A380 superjumbo.

The plans are being drawn up by Christian Streiff, the new Airbus chief executive, for an EADS board meeting on September 29 and could see cost cuts of at least €2bn (£1.35bn) a year, including job losses and eventually moving production to plants outside Europe.

It comes as Airbus is hit by a further delay of up to six months in deliveries of the A380 planes, putting them two years behind schedule. The delay is likely to trigger a further profits warning from the EADS board next week.

In June EADS said problems with the superjumbo's wiring would hit earnings by €2bn between 2007 and 2010 and only nine planes would be delivered next year against an original plan of 25. That provoked a 26% fall in its shares and sources yesterday confirmed that as few as four planes could be handed over in 2007.

Mr Streiff, brought in from the glass-maker Saint Gobain to replace Gustav Humbert, is said by insiders to be determined to "get all the bad news out of the way" and to overcome the production problems that have dogged the A380.

His plans are expected to involve a more radical restructuring of the entire business which could see its earnings wiped out by the remorseless rise of the euro against the dollar. Airbus sells its planes in dollars but its costs are in euros. Under Mr Streiff's plans, work that is currently shared between the main Airbus plants in Toulouse and Hamburg would be given to just one. It would involve more components, traditionally bought from European suppliers, sourced overseas to companies operating in the dollar zone.

Ultimately, it is said, output could be switched to new plants such as the factory Airbus is building in China for its A320 planes or even the US itself where the company plans to build a plant in Alabama for the air-to-air refuelling tanker plane it is offering to the Pentagon in a contract worth up to $100bn (£52bn).

Mr Streiff's drastic plans have also been spurred by the decision of BAE Systems to sell its 20% Airbus stake to EADS, giving it full ownership of the planemaker which provides about 80% of its earnings. BAE shareholders are due to approve that exit strategy on October 4.

The new EADS co-chief executives, Tom Enders and Louis Gallois, who back Mr Streiff's plans, see them as vital to restoring the fortunes of both Airbus and its sole parent. The planemaker has been struggling to win orders this year, capturing just 222 to the end of August against 585 for a resurgent Boeing. "Five years ago Boeing was in the mire but is now soaring and Streiff is confronting Airbus with a stiff reality check after the rapid transition from being top dog to being forced to examine everything we do," a source said.

Yesterday the planemaker, which has outsold Boeing for the past three years, won some respite when Aeroflot, the Russian national carrier, said it would buy 22 A350s and an equal number of Boeing's rival 787 Dreamliners. Its decision, still to be approved by the government, came ahead of talks in Paris between President Vladimir Putin, his French counterpart, Jacques Chirac, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. Mr Putin has approved a move by a Russian bank to take a 5% stake in EADS and is keen to build up strategic holdings in other EU sectors as he restructures his country's aerospace industry into one company.

But EADS, which welcomed the Russian stake and has a 10% holding in Siberian planemaker Irkut, has warned it will not give any seats on its board to Russian investors even if they raise their holding.

Separately, Lufthansa said it would buy five A330s over the next two years to fill a gap left by late deliveries of the superjumbo it has on order. It is also buying five A319s, 10 A320s and 15 A321 jets for its short-haul fleet.